Are There Monsters Under Your Bed?

Do you have monsters under your bed? Are there emotions and events you are not dealing with? Do you repress certain overwhelming feelings, emotions and events? The energies we deny amplify, leaving us feeling out of control, powerless, blocked and stuck. They become monsters or ghosts in our psyche.

Our frightening experiences need to be processed and digested by our system for us to glean the wisdom that lies at the heart of them. When we ignore or repress a traumatic event, it develops into a generalized and often irrational fear like being afraid of people, animals, heights or traveling to name a few examples.

Emotions like fear, anger, sorrow, hatred and shame are often triggered by our frightening emotional experiences. When we run from or deny those experiences they are trapped within us and form the foundation for negative behaviors and personality structures.

Within each energy, emotion and sensation we experience is the ability to overcome it. As you know, within yin there is yang and within light there is darkness. The same is true for our challenging emotions and experiences. If we are patient and dedicated these experiences will show us many beautiful qualities within ourselves like our ability to love, forgive, accept, be resilient and much more. When we stay with our overwhelming experiences, instead of running away, our indestructible nature and truest essence--boundless love--will be revealed. No emotion or event can ever destroy that.

Yes, the root and truest nature of these powerful energies are simply love. We have become ignorant of this truth. When we run from our experience or identify with it we miss the chance to learn the lessons it has to teach us. If, instead, we turn toward, examine and look with our inner light of awareness on what we perceive as “monsters” and "ghosts," we will discover that they lose their power and disappear over time.

When we identify with our experiences and emotions we often feel powerless, like a leaf in the wind blown around by our internal experiences. We are constantly swayed by our internal tides cyclically happy, sad or angry depending on what our egoic mind tells us. To experience your wholeness, you must release your attachments and discover the most precious internal jewel and liberator, which is awareness. Awareness is the ground of all experiences. Awareness allows everything to express and transform itself effortlessly. You can free yourself from the internal voices and interpretations and know yourself as the luminous, ecstatic ground of awareness.

Is there an event or some emotions that need your attention? In denying them they become "monsters" in your consciousness. I encourage you to "look under your bed," "open your closets," turn on the light of your awareness, reach out for help and let yourself discover your power, strength, courage, fearlessness as well as many more immeasurable qualities. Countless gems and treasures lie within each challenge we face when we choose to "turn on the lights" in the dark places inside and transform our "monsters" into allies.

As Thich Nhat Hanh so eloquently says, “Within the lotus is the mud, for the lotus could not come into being without the mud." The reality of life is interdependence. We forget this truth when we live from our dualistic mind. The dualistic mind's habit is to perceive a self as separate from everything, an inner and an outer, and to process life through that lens. This creates disempowerment. This is the deepest root of our separation from all energies and experiences as well as from our innate healing power.

Within each one of us is the internal power and strength to transform our suffering, painful memories and destructive patterns into gold. You will never know this truth, wisdom and victory unless you summon the courage to take this journey. Embrace the places you fear or have hidden from yourself. Know that you have what you need inside yourself to overcome your emotional blocks as well as the external resources to help you. It may seem daunting, but freedom awaits you.

Be your own hero. Free your internal monsters and ghosts and reclaim the energy you pushed away. Know light in your dark places. Discover the lotus within your internal mud.

Love,

Lisa

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Two Healing Events in April

"Wellness Styling For Your Life"

Please join us for an evening dedicated to wellness and community. The evening benefits LIFT; a non-profit organization established to promote youth and family wellness in low-income communities. Exciting demonstrations, speakers and 10% off your purchase that night. Lisa will be discussing how you can activate your inner healing power through gentle touch and intuitive guidance as well as offering sessions.

Thursday April 26th
from 6pm to 9pm
At Liquid Marin
709 5th Avenue, San Rafael, CA

$10 advance tickets can be purchased at Liquidmaring.com or in the store.
There will be raffles for AMAZING prizes and complimentary healthy snacks and drinks.

For more information on all the presenters, booths, demonstration time & advance tickets, go to Liquid Marin or call 415.258.9320


"New Living Expo"












Animals speak. Do you listen?

Come hear Lisa
at the New Living Expo
Friday night April 27th
from 8-9pm in room 1

accompanied by Healing Harpist Christine Tulis
Discover your innate abilities to communicate with animals. The rational mind takes a back seat while your natural sensitivities lead. Learn to respect your animal companions and have a mutual relationship.

Animals are wonderful opportunities to experience unconditional love; they are also our teachers and mirrors.

Opening to this world you experience more intimacy with your animals and life. Welcome to life beyond only the rational mind and to being a fuller human.

I will also have a booth (#729) offering
Network Chiropractic combined
with Intuitive and Energy Healing.

Sessions will be $20 for 15 minutes
or $40 for a half an hour.

Dr. Christopher Powell will be there as well offering
Network Spinal Analysis and
Linda Benn will be offering
Massage and Energy Healing.
They both practice out of
Fulfilled Living Wellness Center.

Christine Tulis will offer Reiki, Acutonics and Sound Healing with her Harp

Identification and Bypass, Spiritual Pitfalls

We are raised and shown by example to know ourselves by identifying with what we are experiencing and by what is happening inside of ourselves. We are taught to believe that who we are is a solid, fixed "I" based on our experiences, history and personality. This habit is ingrained, unconscious and automatic. It occludes who we ultimately are and creates great suffering because we no longer have perspective on what we are experiencing. Therefore, we take it too seriously and at times this can feel unbearable.


Who we truly are is a unified field of oneness or love. It pervades and is everything. This fundamental ground of who we are is usually lost sight of, but it still exists, and through training, dedication and commitment we can realign and remember this truth and live it.

In Tibetan Buddhism who we ultimately are is emptiness/bliss or awareness/emptiness or clear light. Emptiness means that one is empty of a separate self. You are that which never dies. Rather than being the content you experience, which is impermanent, you actually are everything and the ground of all existence.

I find this helps give perspective, acceptance and ease to what I am experiencing. Through time and commitment you can learn to perceive and experience this awareness, realizing as well that the fundamental ground of who you are is also the true nature of all the content you experience. What freedom.

Anger, hatred, sorrow, shame, guilt, as well as happiness are no longer "you". This does not mean you no longer experience emotions, thoughts, certain states, or patterns sometimes that is true. Rather, it means that you are no longer swept away by the sea of your experience. Instead, you have a true ground to hold everything having remembered your connection and awareness of your essential nature.

This does not mean that you ignore or bypass the content of your experience either. It means that you embrace everything knowing ultimately you are awareness/emptiness or love and so is what you are experiencing. From this view, you feel and experience the fluidity of phenomenon. All our experiences are constantly changing and liberating themselves in each moment. This is the true nature of reality. This awareness gives you the capacity to be with everything as it is. The trap and pitfall is that as you learn your true self you can go to the opposite extreme of nihilism. You might start rejecting phenomenon rather than being the ground which frees all experience. You are nothing and everything.

In embracing everything with awareness you are able to be present with that which may seem intolerable and the content will reveal itself in its wisdom aspect. For example, at face value anger may arise and as you are present with it rather than creating an "I" from it, anger will transform into wisdom and reveal a broader, more inclusive perspective resulting in wise action and speech. Often we react and act from an emotion. This creates suffering for ourselves and others. Sitting with our emotions and being present with them allows them to reveal themselves as wisdom, generating wise effort and action.